This blog will be used to highlight ideas and innovation in teaching and learning.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

One laptop per child - a poorly implemented example

This article highlights what can go wrong when a major initiative is implemented without careful planning, particularly around teacher development. A better idea for the Peruvian government would have been to put in place a smaller, well orchestrated laptop progamme first, then learn from the mistakes and make adjustments accordingly.

The article starts:

'Peru's distribution of more than 800,000 low-cost laptop computers
children across the country easily ranks as one of the world's most
ambitious efforts to leverage digital technology in the fight against
poverty.

Yet five years into the program, there are serious doubts about whether
the largest single deployment in the One Laptop Per Child initiative was
worth the more than $200 million that Peru's government spent'.